Friday, November 14, 2014

Tatum and Hill Reunite for Raunchy Sequel as Cops Undercover on
College campus

When we last saw
LAPD Officers Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum), the
partners were handed new identities and sent back to high school in order to
crack a teen drug ring. However, that proved easier said than done, especially
since the unathletic nerd and the academically-challenged hunk were both a
little long in the tooth to pass for seniors.

Now, hard-boiled Captain
Dickson (Ice Cube) has ordered the pair of polar-opposites undercover again,
this time to masquerade as college students at Metro City State. Their assignment is to find the
dealer on campus selling a lethal blend of Adderall and Ecstasy with the street
name WHYPHY (as in “Wi-Fi”).

Jenko and Schmidt’s first order
of business is to blend-in once they’ve matriculated and moved into the dorm.
That proves to be a Herculean challenge, despite Jenko’s enthusiasm about
becoming “the first person in my family to pretend to go to college.” For
example, when a sociology professor innocently calls on him in class to answer
a question about the War on Drugs, he defensively snaps, “Why would you ask me?
I’m not a cop.”

Schmidt doesn’t fare much
better, when he’s derisively referred to as a “30 year-old 8th
grader” by the wisecracking BFF (Jillian Bell) of the cute coed (Amber Stevens)
he picks up at a poetry slam on open mic night. Further complicating matters is
the fact that only after a consummating the relationship does he learn that the
identity of her very overprotective father.

Thus unfolds 22
Jump Street, a worthy sequel which manages to
eclipse an already outstanding original. This installment improves on 21 Jump
by spinning a more engaging storyline and by further fleshing out the
personalities of the likable leads.

The production also features Ice Cube
in an expanded role while adding a number of notable support characters in
Amber Stevens (daughter of Shadoe Stevens, the voice of the skeleton on The
Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. She plays) as the love interest, Jillian
Bell as her relentlessly-rude roommate, and Kenny and Keith Lucas as the
protagonists’ terminally-eccentric dorm mates.

Of course, most of the film’s focus
remains on the hapless heroes as they make the most of the belated opportunity
to experience college when not attempting to apprehend a most elusive perp.
Hang around for the closing credits, and you’ll be treated to ideas being
floated for Jump Streets 23, 24 and beyond.

Tatum and Hill generate chemistry aplenty in a
laff-a-minute, “bro”-mantic adventure every bit as funny as the first.

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.